A journey towards excellence.. GEMBAKAIZEN E- Newsletter from Kaizen Institute Africa India Middle East Kaizen Quote Don t find fault, find a remedy - Henry Ford Message From Director: This issue marks the change of from being a KI Africa e- Newsletter to being an RSU (Regional Support Unit) e-newsletter. The Kaizen Institute region that it reports from, is identified as AIM (Africa, India, Middle East). From this issue onwards Jalay (the chief editor) gets an India editor Manish Prajapati, to provide him support, and India inputs. The outgoing quarter ushered in 2011, and has been very eventful for our Region. Dramatic changes seem to be happening in North Africa. At KI, we began 2011 by beginning to work with some new clients in Dubai, Malawi, Nigeria, Kenya and Zambia. The focus on Business Development in India started bearing fruit as we signed up with some prominent new clients. Kaizen Institute expanded globally on New Year day by the merger of Gemba Research into its fold. This strengthens KI s presence in US, China and Japan, and helps us become truly global. It also brings two new products to our portfolio, which we encourage our clients to benefit from: 1. JKE (Japan Kaikaku Tour): Gemba runs nearly 30 Japan tours a year. Our Executive Director, Brad Schmidt is located in Tokyo, and has developed an extensive network of world-class sites, who partner with us to promote excellence. Tours can be tailored to specific requirements, and to specific budgets! 2. Gemba Academy: On-line Lean Manufacturing Training. Please visit http://www.gembaacademy.com The highlight of this quarter was our second 2-day National Convention on Operational Excellence IndiZen 2011 held at Pune, India covered inside. Our chief guest, and closing keynote speaker, was Brian Maskell, the Lean Accounting guru from the US. He also conducted two one-day programs on Lean Accounting A Practical Approach at Pune and at Chennai (in partnership with CII Confederation of Indian Industry). We developed and introduced NGK (Nichijo Gemba Kanri) methodology into client gembas during this quarter, and received glowing feedback! We are gratified, and continue to look forward to being the partner of choice for our esteemed clients in the domain of Operational Excellence. - Vinod Grover
From the Editor s Desk: Dear Readers, As we all know every day Kaizen Institute is growing bigger and better, and I am very pleased to share with you that is also expanding its horizon. Now onwards it will not only focus on the news from the Africa BU (Business Unit) but from the current issue onwards, it will also cover the news from India and Middle East. Hence, It will become RSU (Regional Support Unit) newsletter in true sense. Simultaneously, the Editorial Team has a new face on board, Mr. Manish Prajapati. Manish works as Business Development Manager for Kaizen Institute India. He will update us with information from India BU (Business Unit). As has been following visual management practices and (muda free) Mind Maps, in this edition separate color of cloud have been used to highlight particular area specific news. Please refer mind map on your left to understand color-coding system. Happy Reading! Chief Editor 2
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Feedback from IndiZen 2011 Participants: INDIZEN was a well-designed event helping us capture a lot of learning to enhance our improvement journey. A variety of insightful presentations were made by the delegates covering topics pertinent to the current needs of the industry. The presentations made on the topic of improving response time to customers were especially helpful as they helped understand the need to improve at the project execution stage. The plant visit arranged by Kaizen Institute during the event helped in understanding the Change Management philosophy followed by other esteemed organizations like Thermax and Cummins India. This helped in providing clarity on how organizations are coming up with various methods to enhance everybody s involvement in the improvement culture. The event was overall a success and met its objectives of creating a cross-cultural framework for organizations to share best practices effectively Mr. Kulbhushan Gupta, Global Head Bussiness Excellence, Jubiliant Organosys Ltd At an outset, I would like to thank Kaizen Institute for giving us an opportunity to participate at the INDIZEN 2011. Participating in an event of such caliber, itself was an honour and a great learning experience for all of us, and coming out as WINNERS is just like a dream come true for the team and a great recognition for all our efforts! I would also like to congratulate the whole team of Kaizen Institute for organizing such a great event and laying a foundation for the industries at the national level to come together, participate and most importantly, learn from each other s experience! To me, INDIZEN 2011 was just like a world cup event, wherein case study teams from different companies, from different parts of the country were participating, with a single track agenda of winning the cup for their esteemed organizations; Now look at the coincidence, this time INDIZEN 2011 also had 14 no. of teams participating in it, exactly similar to the nos. of team participating in current Cricket World Cup 2011!! Anyways, we are really thrilled and delighted with the overall experience our people have got during the 2 day event and this win has resulted in an improved Kaizen momentum at the company level. The whole team is charged and now looking forward to work aggressively towards achieving better results in all forms of PQCDSM. Thanks to Kaizen Institute and INDIZEN 2011 once again!! We cherish this rare feat achieved and pledge to come back even stronger, the next year! Mr. Shantanu Shukla, Head Quality Systems, KEC International Ltd (Cable Division) Congratulations on well organized IndiZen 2011! Kaizen has no boundaries it works in India just like it works in Kenya Ms. Lilian Odhek, Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) IndiZen was very interesting! Particularly we liked case-studies, presentations and discussion across all type of industries Mr. Vinay Joshi, General Manager (Manufacturing), Cadila Healthcare Ltd. 5
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Kaizen Story: The Bells The bell was ringing for the 7 th time when the king was about to sign a trade treaty with his neighborhood kingdom. The bell had been continuously interrupting, each time the bell rang the king had to stop the discussion. Actually the bell was installed by the first king of the country as a token of gratitude to the people who had chosen him. The purpose was any grieving people can ring the bell and the king would attend at any cost, day or night. At that time the population was thin and this method worked well. But then the kingdom expanded and the population multiplied, this continual tradition was a real menace for the current king to think, eat or sleep peacefully. So the king discussed with the advisor who was his childhood tutor about removing the bells. But the advisor was not in favour of losing the selfless service of the king to the people. However, the king thought by attending every subject s grief, which was almost trivial, he was not able to commit to other needful improvements. So he decided to divide his kingdom into 10 provinces and to choose 11 wise men to attend their grievances. The chosen 11 men were taught the laws of the kingdom by the advisor. The king took the 11 men along with him every time the bell rang. So they got a first hand knowledge of dealing with problems. Wisest of the 11 was chosen to be the chief counselor and the remaining 10 were placed in charge of the ten provinces. At the beginning of every week the 10 province heads assembled in the palace headed by the chief counselor and discussed the issues they were not able to resolve. And the chief counselor discussed the unresolved issues with the king and the advisor. At first the people were unhappy due to the denial of direct access to the king. Soon they realized that the 10 men were solving their problems just as the king would. Besides, they didn t have to travel all the way to the palace for resolving their grievances. Finally, the bell was removed. The king could now focus on other important issues. He could also think, eat and sleep peacefully. Moral of the Story: 1. It is not always necessary to follow the old traditions. Be innovative! 2. A leader should prioritize his time over small and big issues 3. A leader should not be a corporate dictator. He should appreciate Empowerment. 4. Empowerment of employees requires appropriate training and providing them with resources 5. Employees should be accountable for their results Contributed By: Mr. Antomagesh A, Consultant Kaizen Institute AIM!"#$%#&%#'(&)*+,&-##(.$/0&1&%+22#%34*'%&-*,&456,*7#5#'3&3*&8!$'()$90$4:#';/*5& 7